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Unparalleled insight into the challenges brands face

At PHD we like to stay ahead of the game. That’s why we’re always thinking, collaborating and sharing knowledge about the future of the industry.

We’ve written a few books...

MergeThe closing gap between technology and us

Over the next thirty years, technology will be more disruptive than ever before due to drastic hardware advances and AI breakthroughs. While developments like the disappearance of devices and emergence of virtual environments may sound like science fiction, our merge with technology virtually and biologically will happen sooner than you think.

With a foreword by futurist and author Ray Kurzweil, Merge investigates the five stages of our unification through exclusive interviews with inspirational business leaders, world renowned academics and pioneering researchers.

Identify what needs to be done today to prepare for a tomorrow when humanity and technology are inextricably linked.

Collaborating with leaders in their field and bringing new thinking to the industry

Predestination

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Where we are all heading

What plans would you put in place if you had the foresight to know where your business, industry, or life is heading?

At PHD, we believe that looking to the future can help us think differently about today. We need to escape the tendency to interpret forthcoming technology with current tools.

Co-founder of Wired magazine Kevin Kelly’s latest book ‘The Inevitable’ explores 12 tech trends that will shape our future. In ‘Predestination’ we further investigate eight of these developments, including virtual reality in the home, an on-demand economy and artificial intelligence embedded into everything.

By understanding and embracing these trends and the prospects they provide, we can arrange our relationships with technology for maximum benefit.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here and getting smarter all the time and with the predicted rise of the sentient VPA making purchasing decisions for us, brands will have to adapt to marketing to algorithms instead of consumers.

Our exploration of AI saw us collaborate with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web, who shared his views on an AI-enabled future when he joined PHD at Cannes Lions.

In “Sentience: The Coming AI Revolution and the Implications for Marketing”, we address the incredible potential for marketers and what they can do now to prepare.

Sentience

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Mind Trip

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Propelling marketers into the future to help address the problems of today

At PHD, we believe that looking into the future can jolt us into thinking differently about today. Together with futurist and techno-philosopher Jason Silva – host of National Geographic channel’s Brain Games – we invited marketers to come on a Mind Trip and gaze a few decades into the future, to 40 or 50 years away, where things such as nanotech and biotech will be commonplace.

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7 billion hours by 1 billion gamers are what’s up for grabs in the Engagement Economy, according to game designer and author Jane McGonigal when she joined PHD at the Cannes Lions festival.

Game Change discusses how ‘gamification’ can be harnessed and applied as a business model for the future.

We liked the idea so much we built a game layer into PHD’s global collaboration platform, SOURCE, allowing employees to gamefully tackle daily challenges, which has led to significant improvements in engagement and output.

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Game Change

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Overthrow

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10 ways to tell a challenger story

There is more to being a challenger brand than David vs Goliath. Telling the story of ‘Small vs Big’ is indeed one kind of potentially successful challenger narrative, but only one – and not the most frequent, despite its brand mythology. Overthrow is an exploration by eatbigfish and PHD of the 10 most common successful challenger narratives; what they share, how they differ, and how they should structure their media behaviours in today’s highly connected world.